Pardee Initiative Blog Posts

Since March, 2011, close to 1 million Syrian refugees have requested asylum in European countries, with Germany being the primary destination. Students Mahlet Woldetsadik (cohort '13) and Gabriela Armenta ('15) say social and economic policies to deal with the refugee crisis will require collaborative planning, monitoring, and assessment efforts to be successful.

The results of a series of cooking contests in Uganda to promote the use of drought-tolerant, nutritious traditional grains—millet and sorghum—signal that a new food trend may be on the horizon. Student Michele Abbott (cohort '14) and professor Deborah Cohen describe their Pardee Initiative "Superfoods" project in this first of three blog posts.

Children conceived as a result of sexual violence during armed conflict face socioeconomic marginalization, family rejection, stigmatization, and violence. Mahlet Woldetsadik (cohort '13) examines ways societies can address the unique needs of the thousands of "children born of war."

The post-conflict regions of northern Uganda need more health care, legal services, psychological support, and counseling. A women's community organization is trying to get Ugandans to pay taxes while teaching them how to get the local government to spend tax money on improving public services, writes student Mahlet Woldetsadik (cohort '13).

The Kwara Community Health Insurance program in Nigeria provides a remarkable proof-of-concept and template for addressing the challenge of providing risk protection for the poor in the developing world, writes student Yemi Okunogbe (cohort '13).

Africa's great strides toward meeting the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals are a compelling reminder of the continent's potential to create a more prosperous and sustainable environment for its people, writes Pardee RAND student Mahal Woldetsadik (cohort '13).

Latin America has one of the highest rates of intimate-partner violence in the world, writes Mahal Woldetsadik (cohort '13), but a series of high-profile cases, including the murder of a journalist by her policeman husband, have propelled intimate-partner violence to the fore of Bolivia's public agenda.

South Africa is proving that governments in poor cities can provide water and collect payment without turning off the water spigot. Detroit and Baltimore might consider exploring models like this that have been successfully tested in even more challenging settings, writes Julia Pollak (cohort '12).

Worldwide, nearly 800 women die every day due to mostly preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. More than half of these deaths occur in fragile states torn by armed conflict and generalized violence, writes student Mahal Woldetsadik (cohort '13).

The 2014 Ebola outbreak was the most severe of its kind in history, writes Pardee RAND student Yemi Okunogbe (cohort '13). At the height of the crisis, there were 800 to 1,000 new reported cases per week in Africa across the three most heavily affected countries. As of the last week of May, there were only 12 confirmed cases. Now the question is, What must be done to prevent and mitigate future crises of this nature?

Next to ethnic and religious predilections, security is by far the biggest issue for Nigerians in Saturday's election, writes Tobi Oluwatola (cohort '12). For more than 50 years, since Nigeria's independence from British rule, its military has played an important role in peacekeeping across the continent. Paradoxically, the country has struggled with an insurgency within its own borders.

Depression is the leading cause of disability throughout the world and is especially prevalent among low-income African countries, where 75 percent of the people who suffer from mental illness do not have easy access to the mental health care they need, writes Mahlet A. Woldetsadik (cohort '13).

U.S. President Barack Obama's visit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India has generated generally positive reactions from analysts, writes Gulrez Shah Azhar (cohort '14). These judgments will be reinforced if the leaders' current chemistry changes Indo-U.S. policy for the better.

Violence against women is a persistent problem around the world. That's particularly true of Papua New Guinea, writes Mahal Woldetsadik (cohort '13), where abuse of women by domestic partners, gang members, and members of law enforcement is widespread, drawing comparisons to conditions in conflict zones.

In South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province, Julia Pollak (cohort '12) explains, investments made over the past 20 years have created a dump with a difference. Rather than being a blight on the neighborhood of Mariannhill, the state-of-the-art Mariannhill Landfill Conservancy is an asset.

Youth unemployment is a pervasive and persistent worldwide scourge: 75 million youth are unemployed now and that rate is expected to rise. RAND joined the World Bank, Accenture, International Youth Foundation, and others to form Solutions for Youth Employment, a unique coalition that acts to increase youth opportunities for productive employment.

The Syrian conflict has been the main contributor to the largest refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide—and the problem can be expected to get worse as the fighting continues. Student Mahal Woldetsadik (cohort '13) notes that, while small steps are being taken to try and meet the needs of women refugees, more needs to be done.

Public housing projects have been controversial for decades in countries around the world. But an informal settlement in Cape Town, South Africa, could serve as a guide for other countries experimenting with community-driven development, an alternative approach to public housing, writes Julia Pollak (cohort '12).

A recent effort to begin to address atrocities against women in the Democratic Republic of Congo has fallen short of advocates' hopes for justice for rape victims, writes Pardee RAND student Mahlet Woletsadik (cohort '13). The initiative focused on criminal prosecution of offenders, a strategy that failed to consider the weak infrastructure of the nation’s judicial system, left the needs of victims unmet and did little to address the issue of prevention.

Less than 5% of Nigerians have insurance; two-thirds of all health care costs are paid out of pocket. When people must pay out of pocket for health care at the point of service, writes Pardee RAND student Yemi Okunogbe (cohort '13) in The RAND Blog, this restricts access, excludes the poorest and most vulnerable, and leads to delays in patients seeking help.

If elected, Modi could turn out to be the politician that India's Congress accuses him of being, focusing on an internal agenda that discourages foreign engagement. The U.S. would no doubt prefer that he follow the economic course he charted in Gujarat.

Between 2001 and 2011, China's pledged foreign aid was $671 billion. In all regions and countries, China's assistance focuses on the development of natural resources, principally energy-related (coal, oil, and gas). Both parties presumably benefit from China's aid but both are also exposed to added risks and hidden costs.

The RAND Corporation has developed a new web registry that aims to increase transparency in the performance and reporting of studies of the impacts of programs, minimizing concerns over several well-known types of bias in research or reporting.

Frederick S. Pardee, a former RAND researcher, contributed $3.6 million to support the Pardee RAND Graduate School and to create its Pardee Initiative for Global Human Progress. His generous gift will seed projects that help those in developing countries.

Contaminated drinking water contributes to the deaths of some 750,000 children under the age of five every year due to diarrheal disease. A RAND project is using mobile phones to increase the sales and use of safe-water filters in Kenya.

Better understanding of how malaria reduction affects different households, regions, and economic sectors in Sub-Saharan Africa could allow policymakers to assess alternative intervention strategies and allocate resources more efficiently and effectively, writes Stijn Hoorens, one of several RAND Europe researchers examining the effects of malaria in developing countries.

The increasing importance of the G-20 summits is testimony to the growing role emerging states now play in managing the international economy. But integrating these newcomers into the global community is unlikely to be straightforward or simple, writes Lowell H. Schwartz.

The interactive Pardee RAND Food-Energy-Water Index allows those interested in improving development to understand the dominant sources of insecurity in a nation and identify cases where many sources of insecurity are interrelated.

Pardee RAND students and RAND researchers conduct extensive work and write about social and economic policy issues in nearly every country around the world. An interactive map lists and links to that research by country, making the content more accessible.

Featured Bloggers

Assistant Policy Researcher, RAND Corporation

Julia Pollak is a Ph.D. candidate at the Pardee RAND Graduate School and an assistant policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. She specializes in microeconomics and game theory—particularly market design, matching theory, and auctions—in the context of labor economics and political…